I know you weren’t in Monte Carlo last weekend but you should have been.
Bonhams’ Monaco sale “Les Grandes Marques a Monaco” (a car auction) at the Fairmont Hotel (pets welcome), was going off with the 1953 Jaguar XK120C ‘C-Type’ fetching a staggering $11.2 million.
The ex-Michael Schumacher, Nelson Piquet, Martin Brundle 1991-1992 Benetton-Ford F1 machine brought $1.6 million, and a one-owner-from-new 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO Coupe 2.8 sold for $2.8m; then again a lot of cars didn’t sell.
Next it was a quick dash down to the Monte Carlo version of Jeff’s Shed, Bert’s Le Sporting (Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi, or Prince Albert, to his people is the local Jeff Kennett), for RM Sotheby’s $42m sale of Ferraris and some other makes.
The night’s focus was the 1951 340 America Touring Barchetta, one of the first big-engine competition Ferraris. It saw service in the 1951 and 1952 Le Mans and nine Mille Miglia rallies from 1984 to 2006. A snip at $11.2m. The only known road-registered 1997 Porker 911 GT1 Evolution brought $4.2m with a very original 1966 Ferrari 275 GTS going to some lucky fat-chequebooked buyer for $2.7m.
What do we make of all this? We caught up with world classic car price guru, Dave Kinney, publisher of the Hagerty Price Guide, in a bar in New York. His view is that market is now in the hands of post-baby Boomers who have sent prices of everything from the 80s, 90s and naughties through the roof.
“Enzo Ferraris are taking a little break, multi-million car prices are slowing and everything perfect is selling” Dave said, as we moved onto our 10th Bud with the Wild Turkey chaser. “They’re buying the things they didn’t have in their childhood and they are buying the best.”
In December, Bonhams sold a perfect and beautiful 1960 Jaguar XK150 3.8-litre Drophead Coupe for $855,000. Two years ago they sold a better XK150, a 100 point 1958 Jaguar XK150S 3.4-litre Roadster with 80 Concours wins, for $333,000. Until recently, American perfect (that is, cars restored so perfectly they are better than new), didn’t appeal to the Poms. Dave thinks many collectors are deciding rather than owning eight classics they will focus on one or two exceptional cars.
Let’s look at the C-Type. This was billed as “one of the most unmolested, highly original, 1950s 24-Hour-race sports cars still surviving anywhere in the world today”. If you have driven XK 120s and 150s and C-Types and D- Types, you would never pay more than $100,000 for the Jags with numbers.
Taking even a racing 150 around a track is like dancing cheek-to-cheek with a very angry grizzly bear. The C and D types handle as well as anything you’ll drive today.
This is a car with serious racing history and one loving owner for 51 years. Guy Griffiths, probably the greatest motor racing photographer of his generation, bought it for £635 ($1282) in 1963.
Guy’s photos of Fangio and Moss taking a corner were so powerful because, apart from being good with the camera, he would stand within a metre or so of the cars. He was so upset the best racing cars of the 50s and 60s were being sold out of England or just being scrapped, he single-handedly started a class for them.
As opposed to the XK150, this car is in very original condition but ready to race. Bonhams called the achingly beautiful piece of metal “one of the most evocative of all surviving, time-machine, works-prepared Le Mans Jaguars”.
Talking of beautiful classics, if you have followed The Weekend Australian’s BA Ute in the recent Boite de Merde Rallee, you would have read of a stopover in Thargomindah, southwest Queensland, which in a mad moment I compared to Chernobyl and Fukushima. Really, Thargomindah is a great town and the local P & C did a super job feeding 400 hungry and thirsty rally drivers.
And finishing up on the Boite de Merde Ralley a special thank you to Lisa at Opposite Lock in Mackay who runs the best retail store of any kind in this great land.
This is a shortened version of the original article. Read the rest at: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/motoring/jaguar-fetches-112m-as-postboomers-drive-grand-marques-higher/news-story/4a933eb333cd46b5dcb2eab5f54e7151?login=1
